Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

by Sharyl Attkisson

A CBS New York executive advised me to first offer the story to Evening News, as a formality, and then take it to CBS This Morning when Evening News declined.

  Evening News executive producer Shevlin reviewed the script and either didn’t get it or didn’t want to. She wanted to gut it. Among other changes, she wanted to cut out the entire section about the 2006 fire, and the video of it.

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on today,” she concluded, mistaken and uninformed. In one fell swoop she had disregarded our weeks of research and the opinions of seasoned experts. Shevlin sometimes had a difficult time grasping complex stories. Maybe I hadn’t written it clearly enough. I offered to rewrite the section to better explain the fire’s relevance. I was determined not to let her tear out the heart of the report. But she was intractable.

  The confounding conversation dragged on—Shevlin in New York with three of us listening on telephone extensions in the Washington newsroom: me, one of my producers, and my senior producer. Each of us patiently took a stab at trying to help explain to Shevlin why her interpretations were so off base. She grew louder and more agitated as she dug in. The three of us in Washington made eye contact and shook our heads. Eventually, I made a knife-across-the-throat gesture signaling to my colleagues that there was no point continuing the discussion. We hung up and agreed that she just didn’t like the story and wasn’t going to air it. There was no sense continuing the charade.

  I went straight to the CBS Saturday Morning broadcast, where I knew the executive producer was still receptive to great original stories and would give this one the time it needed to be well told. He viewed the script and the finished product, said it was terrific, and scheduled it to air the following weekend. I would fly to New York to introduce it on the set.

  All was well until the Thursday before the air date. I got a strange call from Laura,***** our ethics czar. That was never a good sign. Over the years, disgruntled CBS insiders sometimes went to Laura to complain about my reporting, especially if it stepped on their toes or was contrary to their personal beliefs. Managers had also employed Laura’s services to try to soften or block my reporting on topics that riled corporate interests.

  In this case, it seems somebody inside CBS had raised objections to our Dreamliner story, though it was yet to air. From what Laura said, this person falsely claimed that I had used Leon as an anonymous source for a previous Dreamliner story that was wrong.

  Nothing like that had occurred: it was a complete fabrication on somebody’s part. Leon hadn’t been a source for me on any other story.

  After we chatted, Laura was satisfied that the complainant had been mistaken and gave my script her seal of approval, commenting that it was “great.”

  I wondered which of my colleagues made up a disparaging story about me and my whistleblower, and why?

  The next day, I was producing an unrelated story for the Evening News and preparing to fly to New York after the broadcast for the Saturday morning Dreamliner live shot.

  A flurry of strange activity erupted.

  First, the Saturday morning executive producer contacted me and said there had been some sort of meeting in New York, and he needed me to talk to Laura about my story again. Meanwhile, my senior producer in Washington told me he’d listened to that meeting via telephone. He said that among those in attendance were Shevlin, CBS This Morning executive Chris Licht, and CBS president Rhodes. Apparently, they came up with endless reasons not to run my story—without seeking any input from me or my producers.

  “It was a bloodbath,” my senior producer told me.

  “Did you defend the story?” I asked. After all, he knew it better than they did. He had approved the script and said it was a great story.

  “There was no point,” he answered. “Their minds were made up.”

  He was right. By the time I talked to Laura later that day, it was clear she’d been convinced or directed to find a way to pull the story.

  Is this a feature story about a whistleblower or an investigative story about the Dreamliner? Laura asked me when we spoke on the phone.

  Both, I explained. As with any good investigation, you like to have a strong human subject at the center of the story, as you expose important facts and information. It was an odd question for a seasoned producer like Laura to ask. She knows how we work.

  Well, if it’s a feature about a whistleblower, I’m not sure he’s that compelling, Laura continued. And if it’s an investigation, why don’t we just wait and see what the government finds and then do the story?

  I took a breath. I could tell the story was dead. This was all pro forma.

  I didn’t give up easily. I explained my philosophy about the type of reporting I try to do. I don’t wait until a story is over, then join the pack and report what everyone else reports, I told Laura. And if we wait on the government to do the right thing before we report a story, we could be waiting forever. Afflicted by conflicts of interest, federal officials more often than not seem to bring up the rear in these types of investigations.

  My explanations fell on deaf ears.

  I hung up the phone and informed my senior producer the story was dead. He told me that if it was any consolation, Evening News probably wouldn’t have aired it anyway once they saw what the quirky whistleblower looked like. It was like twisting the knife in my heart. TV likes pretty people who say predictable things and speak in homilies. I like real people who tell the truth.

  Both of my producers and I lodged verbal and written objections. I told David Rhodes that my two terrific producers and I had worked at a combined four networks and three investigative units. To exclude our input and kill the story was dreadfully wrong.

  The incident added a new sense of urgency to the discomfort I already had over the Benghazi affair. The day the Dreamliner story died, I told my senior producer, “I’m not going to walk out today or tomorrow. But I’m letting you know, I don’t see how I can finish out my contract under these circumstances.”

  When Isham returned from vacation, he said he was sorry he hadn’t been here to help intervene on my behalf. I told him I didn’t foresee finishing my contract. It was late February 2013.

  Deep down, Kim and I suspected what was going on. Boeing was in PR crisis mode. Experts and consultants felt threatened not to talk to the press about the Dreamliner. Many of these consultants depend on the airlines and airplane manufacturers for business. They couldn’t afford to go up against Boeing.

  I also knew that Boeing had been lobbying Congress to not convene hearings on the Dreamliner. And, in fact, hearings that were once reported to be imminent never materialized.

  I could only assume that powerful interests had gotten to CBS, too. I had no way to know for sure. Nobody was going to tell me. Fueling my suspicions: it seemed like other media quit covering the Dreamliner’s problems about the same time. The NTSB even halted its regular schedule of issuing updates. We all went from near-daily interest in the developing Dreamliner story, to more or less letting the topic fall off the planet.

  Six months later, on August 1, 2013, a CBS colleague who knew about the fiasco over the Dreamliner story alerted me that United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek was about to be interviewed live on CBS This Morning. United was the only U.S. airline flying Boeing Dreamliners.

  I turned the TV to Channel 9, our local CBS Washington affiliate, and watched Smisek get several minutes of uninterrupted airtime on our news broadcast to promote his corporation and an upcoming merger that required government approval. A PR coup for United.

  Midway through, the Dreamliner came up.

  “Do you still believe in the 787 Dreamliner?” asked an anchor.

  “Absolutely!” answered Smisek, adding, “It’s a great airplane!”

  The other anchor chimed in. “So you’re here to say”—he points in time with the words for emphasis, as if a probing question is ahead—“the s
afety issues are behind you with respect to the Dreamliner?”

  “I think the Dreamliner is absolutely a safe airplane . . .” agrees Smisek.

  Much later, in June 2014, the National Transportation Safety Board would issue findings that Boeing’s processes to certify its lithium-ion batteries in 2006 were “inadequate.” The board also, in essence, criticized the FAA—the agency that had cast aside Leon’s original complaint—and said that in the future, it should draw on the expertise of independent specialists outside the aviation industry so “that both the FAA and the aircraft manufacturer have access to the most current research and information related to the developing technology.”

  | AWARDS REBUFFED

  It’s against the backdrop of the Dreamliner disaster, the Benghazi bungling, and the green energy drubbing that the 2013 television news award season rolls around. The broadcasts enter their best work in various categories from the prior year, in hopes to gain professional recognition for their efforts and the public service provided.

  But this year, nobody contacts me to see which of my stories I might recommend for the prestigious Emmys.

  Kim and I talk about it. It had been a struggle, but we had managed to find homes for some excellent stories on various broadcasts that season. There was the one green energy story that aired on CBS This Morning before the Big Chill descended. And there were more that we managed to get on the CBS Weekend News.

  There was an impressive spate of exclusive Benghazi stories that aired on Evening News prior to the curtain falling on that story.

  And there was a mix of congressional oversight reporting we had done for various broadcasts, including an exposé on lobbying for CBS Sunday Morning and an undercover investigation into the fund-raising practices of congressional Republican freshmen.

  We are proud of the work. So, we decide to enter the Emmys on our own. Who knows? The judges might find one of our entries worthy of a nomination, even if CBS didn’t.

  A couple of months later, I’m on vacation in Austria when I click on an email from a colleague.

  “Congratulations on the Emmy nomination!” it reads.

  The nominations have just been announced online. I click on the link for the full list and am pleased to see that our green energy stories had received a nomination. I scan to see what other stories made the list.

  To my surprise, I find my name on another nomination. This one for our Benghazi stories.

  As I keep reading, I see a third nomination: for the congressional stories. All three of our entries had received nominations. My strongest year ever in terms of this sort of commendation.

  That recognition makes it more difficult for partisans and propagandists to credibly portray my work as shoddy, partisan, and agenda driven. It also makes the CBS insiders who tried to disparage the stories furious, because it appears to prove their judgment wrong.

  | THE FINAL DAYS AT CBS

  It’s mid-February 2014. There are new discussions between my agent, Richard Leibner, and CBS over my possible departure. I’m at Reagan National Airport preparing to fly from Washington to New York.

  I see my Isham browsing the magazine rack at the Delta Shuttle gate. The same one from which I’m departing.

  I approach him.

  “Hello, sir!” I say.

  Isham looks up from the magazines. I ask if he’s going to New York. He is. He asks if I’m going. I am. We ask each other what flight. We’re both on the 2 p.m. Coincidence.

  We’re silent for a moment. Looking at each other. He looks stern. He’s always tried to be an advocate for me and for investigative reporting. He was still trying at the end. He’s an investigative guy to the core. But I know I’m a headache he doesn’t need.

  Suddenly, he breaks out into a smile and chuckles.

  “Never a dull moment when you’re around,” he says.

  I shrug and smile back. I don’t think I’m the one creating the drama. But I guess there’s a difference of opinion on that.

  A couple of weeks later, it was finished. I ended the CBS stage of my career after twenty mostly happy, mostly successful, mostly satisfying years—and a couple that were really, really tough.

  | MORELL POSTSCRIPT

  I couldn’t have been happier to be gone from CBS than when the Benghazi story again reared its head in earnest, in April 2014. It centered on former CIA deputy director and now CBS News consultant Morell.

  First, on April 4, Morell was called to testify to Congress about newly released documents that show he heavily edited the Benghazi talking points. This wholly contradicted the original stories Morell told.

  Free from CBS, I was able to write an unvarnished, factual account of his testimony and contradictions and publish it on my own website. Few others in the media seemed to assign any particular significance to Morell’s highly evolved story and contradictions. (Yawn.)

  But on April 29, it became difficult for the press at large to ignore incriminating new documents—even though they were obtained by a conservative watchdog group that many in the news media love to hate: Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch had obtained emails by suing the State Department over a denied Freedom of Information Act request.

  These emails showed direct White House involvement in steering the Benghazi narrative toward the “spontaneous protest.” The very thing that the administration had denied repeatedly, implicitly and explicitly.

  One of the operative Judicial Watch documents, which the government had withheld from Congress and reporters for a year and a half, was an email circulated two day after the attacks by President Obama’s assistant and deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes. The September 14, 2012, email told White House press advisors that a goal of an upcoming call to prepare Ambassador Rice for her Sunday talk show appearances was “[t]o underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”

  While many in the media would have liked to continue turning a blind eye to the Benghazi story, that changed when USA Today published an article on this revelation. I imagined it set off a flurry of meetings and frantic editorial discussions at major news outlets.

  USA Today covered it. Should we cover it, too?

  Will we look bad if we don’t?

  Jonathan Karl of ABC reported a full package on his network’s evening newscast while NBC had a brief thirty-second “voice-over.” CBS alone decided there was no news at all here. Nothing to see. Move along.

  The media blog Mediabistro later noted, “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley was the only evening newscast last night to not cover newly uncovered emails from White House adviser Ben Rhodes. . . .” In response, a CBS News spokesperson stated that there was “a thorough editorial discussion about it at CBS Evening News and David Rhodes [Ben’s brother] was not involved [in the discussion].”

  On May 1, 2014, I received a document that showed the State Department almost immediately concluded that the Islamic militia terrorist group Ansar al-Sharia was to blame for the Benghazi attacks. The State Department’s Beth Jones said so in a private communication to the Libyan government, according to an internal email at 9:45 a.m. on September 12, 2012.

  “When [the Libyan ambassador] said his government suspected that former Qaddafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him the group that conducted the attacks—Ansar al-Sharia—is affiliated with Islamic extremists,” Jones reports in the email.

  The private account between Jones and the Libyan government was entirely at odds with the messaging that President Obama, Clinton, Rice, and White House press secretary Carney delivered to the American public.

  The Obama administration’s entire Benghazi narrative had now fallen to pieces and was still crumbling. Imagine if the public had known prior to the 2012 election all that’s been revealed since.

  Were I still at CBS, there’s little doubt I would be viewed by some as the networ
k villain, offering stories on these important developments, pushing for them to air while the whisper campaign thundered on. Now dearly departed from my alma mater, I was free to commit unencumbered journalism without pressure.

  Substitution Game: Is there anyone who really believes that if President Bush had claimed al-Qaeda was on the run, only to have the misfortune of a terrorist attack in Benghazi in 2012 and the event of ferocious jihadists taking over Iraqi cities in 2014, the press wouldn’t have led the news highlighting the contradiction between his optimistic proclamations and the sordid reality? Bush, like all presidents, had plenty of imperfections. The difference is, they were usually, enthusiastically, and thoroughly probed by a persistent media.

  | AFTER CBS

  In April 2014, just a few weeks after leaving CBS, I attended an invitation-only investigative reporting conference at the University of California, Berkeley, called the Logan Symposium. The theme was apt: “Under Attack: Reporters and Their Sources.” I was invited to moderate a panel called “The Third Rail: Stories We’re Not Supposed to Tell.” CBS had withheld the invitation from me when it first arrived before Christmas of 2013 and, I learned, intended to decline on my behalf without telling me. But the Logan organizers eventually reached out to me directly and I accepted.

  At the symposium, I was greeted with a surprisingly warm reception from peers who were familiar with some of my travails. Many of them shared their own stories of undue political and corporate pressure and censorship. There was general agreement among the speakers that the Obama administration has advanced press restrictions beyond anything previously experienced, at least by us.

  “The Obama administration is trying to narrow the playing field for reporters,” said Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporter James Risen, who faced the threat of jail time for refusing to turn over information about a confidential source.

  “A Rip Van Winkle today would be shocked with what we accept in society and what we think of as normal,” Risen told the audience of several hundred investigative journalists and Berkeley journalism graduate students. He warned that there’s been a “fundamental change in society” since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that Americans have given up civil liberties and press freedoms “slowly and incrementally.”